Chinese Bank and the Manchurian railway business,
there was the Kiaochow affair, then the Port Arthur affair, the
Weihaiwei and Kwangchowwan affairs, nothing but "affairs" all tending
in the same direction--the making of a very grave political situation.
The juniors to-day make fun of it, it is true, and greet each other
daily with the salutation, "_La situation politique est tres grave_,"
and laugh at the good words. But it is grave notwithstanding the
laughter. Once in 1899, after the Empress Dowager's _coup d'etat_ and
the virtual imprisonment of the Emperor, Legation Guards had to be
sent for, a few files for each of the Legations that possess squadrons
in the Far East, and, what is more, these guards had to stay for a
good many months. The guards are now no more, but it is curious that
the men they came mainly to protect us against--Tung Fu-hsiang's
Mohammedan braves from the savage back province of Kansu who love the
reactionary Empress Dowager--are still encamped near the Northern
capital.

The old Peking society has therefore vanished, and in its place are
highly suspicious and hostile Legations--Legations petty in their
conceptions of men and things--Legations bitterly disliking one
another--in fact, Legations richly deserving all they get, some of the
cynics say.

The Peking air, as I have already said, is highly electrical and
unpleasant in these hot spring days with the dust rising in heavy
clouds. Squabbling and cantankerous, rather absurd and petty, the
Legations are spinning their little threads, each one hedged in by
high walls in its own compound and by the debatable question of the
_situation politique_.

Outside and around us roars the noise of the Tartar city. At night the
noise ceases, for the inner and outer cities are closed to one another
by great gates; but at midnight the gates are opened by sleepy Manchu
guards for a brief ten minutes, so that gorgeous red and blue-trapped
carts, drawn by sleek mules, may speed into the Imperial City for the
Daybreak Audience with the Throne. These conveyances contain the high
officials of the Empire. It has been noticed by a Legation stroller on
the Wall--the Tartar Wall--that the number of carts passing in at
midnight is far greater than usual; that the guards of the city gates
now and again stop and question a driver. It is nothing.

Meanwhile the dust rises in clouds. It is very dry this year--that is
all.

II

MUTTERINGS

24th May, 1900